


Unexpected Gifts

by ReaperWriter



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Daddy Detective Origin Story, F/M, Headcanon, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 06:23:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12426819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReaperWriter/pseuds/ReaperWriter
Summary: In this alternate realm, Captain Hook learns what the cost of the defeating the Dark One would be and it breaks him. One night in a tavern will be the thing to bring him to his redemption.





	Unexpected Gifts

**Author's Note:**

> So I've been thinking about how any version of Killian Jones would end up with a daughter in the first place. She's not Milah's, and she's not Emma's. So who was her mother? And this came out. Sorry/Not Sorry.
> 
> TW: character death in child birth

It takes him centuries to truly escape Pan. To finally get his crew the fuck out of Neverland and back to the Enchanted Forest. He left good men dead on that island, and his rage burns hotter than ever. Maybe once he’s finally killed his Crocodile, he can go back and find a way to murder that demon boy.

He accepts the job going to Wonderland because the Evil Queen is by far the most vicious potential ally he’s ever had. If he can bring her into his cause, perhaps there’s hope.

Then Cora spills the secret even her daughter had kept from him. “Kill the Dark One? Oh you pretty fool, there is a way to kill the Dark One.”

“I have a way. Dreamshade to the heart.”

“That won’t do it.” Cora arches one carefully sculpted eyebrow. “Trust me, I have _intimate_ knowledge of that imp.”

“Then what will.”

“There’s a dagger. Control the dagger, control the Dark One.” Her grin grows feral. “Stab the Dark One with it, kill the Dark One. It’s the only way.”

His heart speeds up, pounding a military rhythm in his chest. A guaranteed plan. A proven way to end the imp’s reign of darkness. “Bloody wonderful. How do I get it?”

“There’s a catch.” Cora lifts her hand, examining her nails.

Oh bloody course there is. “Aye?”

“He, or she, who kills the Dark One?” She pauses, and he grits his teeth. “They become the new Dark One.”

And just like that, the world falls out from under him.

He makes it back from Wonderland in time to see the Evil Queen fall. Not that it matters. Bloody nothing matters. He rejoins his crew and sets sail, ending up in some foul little port on the edge of nowhere, three bottles of rum in.

“Are you all right?” She has a sweet voice, does the bar maid. Young, younger than Milah was. Certainly younger than him, but pretty enough with soft chestnut curls and soft brown eyes and just a sprinkle of freckles on her skin.

Normally, he’d lie. Tell whatever wench he wished to bed he was right as rain. That he was celebrating, to pull up a tankard and have a seat on his lap. He’d make merry while his heart seethed beneath it all.

Tonight, he can’t. Maybe it’s her own sad smile. Maybe it’s that he’s lost even the hope of vengeance. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

“No, lass. I’m not.”

She sits with him for hours as his tale spills out. Stories of his father. Of Liam dying in his arms. Of Milah giving her life for him. The horrors of Neverland.

And she listens. No pressure, no demands. She listens and she nods and she makes the sort of soft, sympathetic sounds he dreams his mother made once upon a time. She gives him bread to eat and a bitter lemon concoction to drink and he sobers after a while.

In her own soft voice, she tells him she came from a village not far from here. That she’d been out in the forest hunting morels to sell in the market when the Queen’s men came. How there’d been no survivors, no market to sell in, no home to come back to. But she still smiles sadly. “Lucky, I suppose, that I lived.”

He envies her that hope. That clinging to the belief that life is still worth living.

At last call, she takes his hook gently in hand and leads him up the stairs to her little room in the attics.

And together, on her cramped little palette, they forget.

He sails away two days later, pressing a soft kiss to her hair. “I can’t stay, lass.”

“I know.” She smiles at him as she finishes lacing her corset, ready to go downstairs and help the old woman running the place open up for the day. “Such is life.”

“Good-bye then, Bess.”

“Fair winds and smooth seas, Captain.”

It’s a year before he comes back around. He spends the days hunting ships from his former home, plundering goods and selling them and just being a pirate. It’s all he has left, after all. But he remembers the tavern girl with a soft fondness, and he wonders if she’s been well.

When he ducks under the lintel, the old woman running the place looks up. Her eyes narrow and her lips pucker like she’s been sucking on a lemon. “Well, you’re a day late and a doubloon short.”

“Excuse me?”

Before the proprietress can respond, a sharp cry erupts from the back. It’s the wail of a child, and young one. What on earth is a baby doing in a place like this?

The girl who ducks through the curtain isn’t Bess. She’s dark with tight corkscrew curls and a longsuffering look on her face. “She won’t settle.”

“She wants her mam,” the old woman says, relieving the new girl of the bundle in her arms. “But her pa will have to do.”

He blinks, looking around for another man. Instead, the woman walks forward and shoves the bundle at him. He gropes for it, more aware of his hook than he’s been in centuries. Swaddled in a dingy grey wool blanket, a small round face inset with a pair of vibrant blue eyes blinks up at him in surprise.

“Are you mad? How can I be her father?”

“Babe’s three moons old.” The woman turned, spitting to the side. “Bess died birthing her. Bled out. Pity, she were a sweet girl.”

“Bess is dead?” He grows cold as he takes in downy chestnut hair peeking out from under the rough cap.

“Three months cold. Told that girl she should send word to you before, but she insisted you weren’t to know.”

“But how do you know I’m the father?” He gropes for an out, something to cling to. Despite his brother’s own eyes staring back at him. “Could be any one.”

“She weren’t that way.” The old woman shoots him a look that would kill a lesser man. “Her one and only you were.”

Breath backs up in his lungs as he remembers Bess, remembers that soft, pained whimper when he’d thrust into her, her nails digging into his back. He’d paused, thinking she needed to be aroused more, to adjust to the intrusion. Instead she wrapped her delicate ankles around his back and urged him on. Had there been blood? Gods, had he taken her maidenhead without even noticing?

“What am I to do with a child?”

“Bess said you’d come for her. Made me promise to hold on to her until then.” The old woman shrugs as the babe started to cry again. “Now you’re here, that’s up to you. No longer my business.”

“But…”

“Felicia can show you how to feed her with a towel and some goats milk.” The woman turns, disappearing through the curtain.

Felicia, not Bess, sighs. “There’s no orphanage here. Nowhere to leave her.”

Leave her. As his mother left him. As his father left him. As Liam and Milah left him. Alone.

The blue eyes widen as he brings his hook up. Little hands reach for it, grabbing on tight.

 The cries stop.

His heart shatters.

His heart mends.

Not alone. Never alone again. He’s a father. She’s his little princess.

“Hello, little love.”

His baby girl laughs. 


End file.
